Tuesday 28th October 2008

The roads are empty tonight: no sound of horns, or chugging of rickshaws. There’s no one out on the streets. Inside houses people gather with their families. Diwali has a distinct Christmas Day feel, though without the mid afternoon Disney and Pixar movies to keep the kids quiet. All around town,people sit around tables, ready to light candles and pray. Diwali is a festival celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists: every major religion in India except Christianity and Islam. But today all will drink chai and eat Mithai: Indian sweets of different colours, tooth-acheingly sweet, made of compressed sugar and condensed milk, ground almonds, or coconut, or squishy dates, topped off with silver leaf and more nuts. All around town, people have been walking with foil-wrapped boxes containing presents to exchange. Strings of bulbs hang from every building, lit up after nightfall along with the fireworks that explode in the air. Huge bright anemones, spreading through the sky, are accompanied by the machine gun sputter of Chinese Crackers. The sky is full of an ashy smoke, weighed down by the dusty Delhi air. It’s chokingly thick.

Before any of this takes place, Hindus pray to the goddess Lakshmi, who emerges this day from an ocean of milk, to ensure wealth and prosperity. But this year, those prayers may be even more earnest, and the presents exchanged even smaller. As the economy hits India as hard as any, it’s going to be a tight Diwali for Delhi families.

India suffered a drop in the Sensex (India’s value-weighted index) four days ago – their lowest since 2005. Of course, it hasn’t been hit as hard as some (or had it as easy as others, such as Iraq, the only country whose economy is growing at a pace) Despite this, India is still the world’s second fastest growing economy, which, considering the fact that the UK’s economy is recording minus growth at the moment, is fairly impressive.

But to touch on a recurring theme, India’s economy still represents a polarisation of the richest and the poorest. This year, India had the highest contribution of entrepreneurs to the Forbes Global 2000 – mostly in the software business - while 60% of the country still live off the land. It's a precarious situation given the increase in floods and drought. An estimated 69% percent of Indian entrepreneurs use personal savings for start-up capital and 18% are funded by family. It’s hardly a figure that indicates the country’s richest starting from the bottom in life. There are no tales of the village-boy-made-good.

The Times of India reported the success story of one entrepreneur who has opened up a chain of paint-your-own pottery cafes in Delhi. They are wildly successful. The idea of opening up a venue for Indians – well known for their traditional crafts and artisan culture – to paint terracotta ashtrays and teapot stands in ludicrous designs in itself characterises how distant the middle class of India are from the poorest, in terms of their culture as well as their wealth.

So while the stock market crashes around the world, and the Sensex continues to fall, 60% of Indians will remain unbothered, and uninhibited. They are more concerned with the next flash flood and the worry that the government, distracted by nuclear deals to ensure the energy to power the new economy, will not be there to bail them out. It’s already failed in Bihar, as my colleagues Michelle and Divya reported for the Hindustan Times:



On this holiday afternoon, Michelle and I head out for a traditional stroll in Lodi Gardens, a local park of magnificent temples, and dotted with palm trees. A child reaches up to us at the stoplight, grabbing Michelle’s arm and asking for rupees. He is covered in sores.

Delhiite breadwinners may be concerned this Diwali that they cannot buy the washing machine their family expected them to provide. Or the car that screamed at them from the advertising pages of the newspaper, alongside a happy, healthy family celebrating Diwali together. The huge poverty problem in India is not one that entrepreneurs alone can solve, and of course they are not to blame for its perpetuity. But each are uncertain about their future. And as one has a voice, ricocheting around the world’s media, the other doesn’t. And it certainly won’t be heard above the explosion of fireworks.